Most farming is being conducted like mines - a resource (e.g. iron ore) is dug out & sold off. One day, the ore is gone & the mine closes down.
Ok, farms can apply fertilizers, chemicals, irrigation etc to maintain some semblance of viability. Using the iron ore analogy it's like bringing in & dumping loads of scrap iron back into the pit to extend the life of the mine - now this is probably a poor analogy (& I'm no farmer or miner) but hopefully it gets the point across.

Ultimately farming has to be a virtuous circle of 100% sustainable practices.
Anything less means our descendants will be living in tents & herding camels (as someone else alluded to in one of these posts).

I heard recently on the radio that the financial services firm Goldman Sachs is to be sued for selling subprime mortgages to the market that were designed to fail because the firm was hedging the mortgages and was making billions of profit by betting on the failure of its own products.

Is this what the farmer is doing?
By causing the failure of his own production system through unsustainable practices the net result is less productivity.

Less productivity results in higher prices for an essential product with limited supply.

So many so called experts report that the world cannot feed itself but they fail to factor in the effect that a shortage of food will have on food prices.

Obviously prices will rise making it profitable to grow food in more and more marginal areas achieving lower and lower yield results while still making profit.

End result: more and more desertification of marginal areas snowballed compounded and repeated until of course the system fails once the environment is totally exhausted and destroyed.

Of course we all know that nature loves a void and will repair itself once we are all long gone and forgotten.

But back to my point, since we all know as well what happened to Goldman Sachs and the financial system they managed to send to the wall.

We farmers are betting on the failure of our own system, making higher profits as our produce becomes scarcer through our own activities.

Ian, I dont like that outlook. I have a little more faith in mankind. When things get crucial, (especially here in Australia), people listen. They etch out the bull *#" and start to take notice. This is when Peter Andrews will be heard. He will have the answers and the proof people are looking for and the media will be all over it. Ill look forward to seeing the useless pollies get the boot! Just keep doing the right thing and bide your time. We need good farmers so keep honing your skills. Did you ever get the worm farm going?
Shirley

Heard an ex- farmer on the Radio the other day say " I used to own a big farm once till I came to the realization that although I was growing enough food to feed '000's of people I was not making enough $$$ to feed my ownfamily....that's when I sold the farm".

Hi Duane and everyone,
I have not been made aware of any EOI put in by Dyard.
They may have mentioned the Avon NSA in their EOI and that would be fine.
I would be very happy to support Dyard in any endeavors they undertake.

Well not much has been happening in this blog and that has been somewhat a disappointment but the reasons for my absence is that apart from preparing and sowing my crop I have pioneered a new technology that I believe is going to make a huge impact not only on the viability of agricultural enterprises right across the country but will be a massive step by all farmers away from the accepted best practice of poisening our landscape with toxic chemical fertilisers.

The cat is out of the bag and the info is out!

A statewide rural newspaper ran my story on the front cover this week, an Internet television program just contacted me asking for permission to interview me and run a segment on my story.
I have the AGM of out local NSF Assocciation today and the interest I have been able to generate by releasing my story to the media in the week before has been huge, the phone has been ringing off the hook!
There are farmers coming from Dumbleyoung and from the far north too.

I hope this time I can get together a really dynamic committee who will push the agenda with me to get natural sequence farming more widely recognized over here in the west and encourage the more conventional and modern farmers to take notice of the potential they are missing out on by not embracing healthy biologically friendly farming methods as a priority principal in all their farming decisions.

That is what my task is today, finally I have got their attention, now I must use this oportunity to jolt them out of their complacency. To make them sit up and consider for a moment that they may not be practicing the best farming methods available no matter how much they have spent on agronomists and advisers.

They must realize if only for a moment that those advising them may not have considered all the facts. That they may have even been given poor illconsidered advice.

If I can do that and stimulate discussion among them, then I believe that they will have begun on the journey that I began only a few years ago, a journey of discovery and learning about matters that I didn't even realize existed and
answers and solutions I couldn't even imagine because of my ignorance and complacency. My complacency that I thought I had acces to all the answers, that those advising me knew all the answers, that I had been taught all the relevant information and that I was on top of it.

The fact is I was in denial. The fact is it took the act of digging deep into a bin to retrieve a book that I had thrown away because it presented information to me that I found confronting.
Thankfully I had a rare moment of clarity and saw myself for what I was at that moment, a closed shop, in denial and not open to new ideas and solutions.

That was how I was at a time when I needed to be the exact opposite.
Our country is facing a nation wide environmental disaster, our globe is facing global environmental disaster and here I was throwing a bookl full of new ideas and solutions in the bin.

I was ashamed of myself and rightly so. I am a young farmer, one of a group who are the future custodian and guardians of health and sustainability of this land I love so much. It is time for that group to stand up now and accept that things have been done wrong, are being done wrong, by us! We need to accept responsibility. Grab hold of the steering wheel and wrench it free from those who have taught us and who have got us to this situation.

First we need to get out of denial. Start learning again, listening, questioning, use all our senses, touch, feel, smell, listen and look.... For ourselves, from the beginning without prejudice, be open and absorb the lessons that are out there right under our feet.

That is what I hope to do today, get those farmers who come to begin that journey...... Back from the brink!

Tractorgas Fertiliser Factory.
What is it and why does it work?
By Ian James, Farmer, Cunderdin.

The Tractorgas fertiliser factory is a simple piece of machinery which when utilised with a working diesel engine in agricultural situations is able to capture, cool and condense diesel engine exhaust emissions into a nutrient rich, moist carbonic acid vapour and through the use of commonly used agricultural seeding equipment can deliver this waste atmospheric pollutant deep into the soil where it has an incredible stimulating effect on soil biology, triggering a rapid and lasting beneficial effect on soil health and nutrition transferring directly to strong and pest free crop growth.

It is common knowledge that many fertilisers are a by-product of petroleum and gas refineries. During the process of oil and gas refinery certain elements are produced as waste and must be captured and removed from the chemical reactions. These elements can be refined further to produce products which are in demand. Modern agriculture has developed a strong demand for these products for use as fertilisers to increase crop yields.

During the process of creating these agricultural fertilisers raw fuel products are subjected to conditions of extreme pressure and heat and subsequent cooling during which molecules are broken down into their component elements which through chemical processes can be separated, collected and reconstituted as fertiliser.

The conditions within the combustion chamber of any diesel engine very closely replicate those within fuel refineries and fertiliser factories. Fuel and air compress and explode creating extreme pressure and heat, nitrogen, oxygen and carbon atoms are freed of their molecular bonds and as pressure is released and cooling begins are attracted to one another to rapidly reform into new molecular structures as in fertiliser factories.

Scientists do not dispute that exhaust emissions are rich in nutrients but it is well accepted among agricultural scientists that the amount of fertiliser produced in the common heavy duty diesel engine when applied per hectare during seeding is only a fraction of the amount generally accepted as being necessary to achieve profitable crop yields.

There is also a growing realisation among agronomists worldwide that the currently accepted practise of applying the heavy rates of high concentration chemical fertilisers required to produce currently profitable yield targets are releasing stored soil carbon, dismantling soil structures and decimating soil biology at an alarming and unsustainable rate. There is also a grass roots realisation among farmers worldwide that by reducing fertilisers dramatically and concentrating on promoting biological soil health by inoculating with beneficial soil biology target yields can be maintained while increasing organic soil carbon and remnant nutrient availability so much so that only a fraction of the amount of fertiliser traditionally applied is required to produce target yields.

Currently accepted best practice farming methods of no till, high rate, high concentration chemical fertiliser and chemical herbicide application (Conventional Methods) are having another unintended and little understood detrimental effect on soil health and plant nutrition. Most farmers are familiar of the effect of nitrogen drawdown caused by high organic matter bacterial decomposition within the soil. What is less understood by farmers and agronomists alike is that fungus can and should also play a significant role in decomposition of organic matter and that unlike bacteria, fungal decomposition does not result in the loss of any soil nitrogen at all, in fact almost all the nitrogen mineralised by fungi during the decomposition process is stored within the fungal organic structure and can be made available in crop to the grass host crop. Instead of promoting the vital soil root fungus conventional fertiliser applications strongly promote bacterial population growth within the soil, outperforming slower growing fungus and out competing for resources at the expense of fungus and suppressing the establishment of healthy fungal populations.

In a healthy soil it is accepted that 50% of decomposition should result from bacterial activity and 50% from fungal activity. This reduces nitrogen draw down and allows for slow release of stored fungal nitrogen to the host crop right through the growing season.

By utilising the Tractorgas Fertiliser Factory in conjunction with a program of biological inoculation it is possible to apply low rates of fertiliser at nano particle size at extremely low concentration but at massive coverage not possible with granular or liquid application methods and at minimal cost. By combining this method of nutrient application, coating soil particles and seed with a nutrient rich moisture vapour with a mycorrhizal fungi seed treatment we can avoid overstimulating the bacterial population and we can assist in the establishment of a strong and active soil fungi.

Mycorrhiza, (root fungi) have a symbiotic relationship with their grass plant hosts. Since the fungi live in the soil they have no capacity for photosynthesis which is the process that plants use to capture energy from light which is stored within the plant as sugar or carbohydrates, therefore fungus is energy poor. Mycorrhiza do have an amazing ability through enzymes they produce which have the capacity to unlock nutrients such as phosphate from molecular bonds formed through soil chemistry with other elements such as iron. As such we have the energy poor but nutrient rich fungus forming a mateship with the energy/sugar rich but nutrient poor grass host. The knowledge of this process is something that has unfortunately been neglected in the education of farmers during the green revolution created by fertilisers and their sales persons of the last century.

This is only the basic of the symbiotic benefits gained by both organisms from this relationship. Plants in their efforts to attract and promote healthy soil root fungi deliberately leak sugars and other stimulants from their roots. These sugars or carbohydrates are carbon rich and can rapidly increase the organic carbon content of the soils they grow in. This carbon acts as a major soil improver, reducing non wetting, increasing amelioration and nutrient retention. Apart from the benefits to both, the plant, soil and fungi from this relationship is the sequestration of massive quantities or carbon from the atmosphere. It has been shown that soil carbon can be increased rapidly and that the soil is the largest potential carbon sink of the global environment.

Just wondering how things are going over there? Would love to hear of any news from your side of the world and how your property is going. Your posts are a great read but also really motivating too. I'm just starting to implement NSF on our place and am very much 'picking up what others are putting down'!

Ian's work is a fantastic example of the Australian spirit of farming isn't it. There is something in the earth here that creates invetion. Maybe its necessity thats the mother of all inventions.

The James' property suffered a very unfortunate case of GM contamination this year, or maybe from last year. Not sure whats happening with the case, but might explain Ian's late reply.

I hope all goes well for them and their community. I know we are wishing Steve Marsh and his court case well, that will hopefully have the outcome that will at least allow farmers to have the choice to farm how they like, which at the moment seems against them.

Last year we farmed with zero fertilizer over the whole farm apart from a few paddocks where I spread some sulphate of ammonium as a trial to see if I could see any benefit from the application.

The year was not perfect but at the end of the season the crops performed very well for the rainfall received.

We achieved an average yield result for our area with the unfertilised crops in some cases easily out yielding the fertilised ones.

I deduced from the results of the trials that we had not had an economic benefit from the fertiliser application and in fact we made a solid loss from the trial.

As a result this year we again planted our whole operation without any fertiliser application.

From our experience with tractor gas over the last few seasons we are comfortable with this decision.

This season we started in early May with small false break. We were were still preparing our new seeding equipment and were not ready to sow on the rain.

With no follow up rains crops planted by our neighbors germinated poorly and wilted and stressed.

No further rain was recorded for three weeks and in dry conditions we began our seeding program dry sowing legumes.

With the legume program finished late May and still no rain we decided to continue sowing regardless with our oat program also going in dry.

Finally in the first week of June a good period of substantial rainfall allowed us to finish our oats and continue with wheat sowing in to good wet soil.

Disappointingly it has not rained again apart from a few isolated light showers for well over a month and along with a long series of historically record breaking cold frosts as low as minus 4.4, things are definitely not looking rosy.

Luckily for me, a strong believer in human induced global climate change, I have changed my farming practices as much as I dare to prepare for the new and future climate reality and I am not at all surprised by the current conditions and as a result of my decisions to cut fertiliser from my costs and replace it with free tractor gas I am still very strongly on track to achieve my target yield which is 50% of the long term district average.

With my cost structures in place I will be able to achieve a strong financial return on my investments with this result and will be in a good position to continue farming the following year.

This result along with ensuring that my farming practices are sustainable into the long term future and that I am making some progress in repairing the damage that has been done to my farm from the past 70 years of unsustainable and degrading farming methods means I am happy that I am on track to achieve my goals set at the beginning of the year.

No, thanks for your reply! It is bloody good to hear of your achievements. I'm at the beginning of implementing these practices on farm... And whilst we don't crop, our place is going to be challenging. We have steep rocky plateaus, with thick stands of iron bark and sloping plains that the water flows straight off, taking the topsoil with it. Not to mention our seasonal streams that are a total mess.... But I know where to start now, and I take courage from people like yourself posting their experiences for the rest of us to keep in the back of our minds.... I am still very much fighting against being thought of as a nutter, and not caring for my stud animals (cattle) because I dare to leave weeds in my paddocks.... Apparently I'm going to kill them according to the next door neighbor! Lol people are such curious creatures...
I am smiling all round for your farming ventures Ian, I hope I can be someone to inspire others in my area as well... Well, after some training and good results. I would love to hear how your harvest goes after the fact, or any other news u may have...if u find a minute for yourself!